Marathon Remake

[Major Pedro]

@Purdie-O: Oh. ok sorry. I think that adding some graphics to the terminal like what M:R did in the airlock level of M1 was good.( they showed a live camera feed)

There are already viewscreens like that in HL2 / Source, it wouldn't be hard to do and it certainly would look good.

[uescsuperhuman]

The premise of my story has to do with a future as if government conspiracy were real, sort of like Deus Ex. In 2012 the government decides to wage war on its citizens to gain more power over their citizens, to scare them, to force them into a surrender under their government and to stop a revolution. Every one gets stuck with a tracking device and everyone is watched over through a massive sattilite that processes all the tracking information. Anyone who is caught doing anything that the government doesn't want you to do is put to death by means of a killswitch input into everyone.
One day, 20 years later, the sattilite gains too much information to hold and malfunctions. This results in several government officials who disagree with the current system of government to revolt and a revolution to take place.
Fast forward 600 years.
Things have gotten much worse. Everything is bad. None of the politicians pay attention to their country anymore and people are in a constant state of riot. They leave everything up to the military, so the country is in a state of civil war. You are a marine who has been victorious in many battles so far. All of a suden, a colony of space pirates kidnaps the president with a major surprise attack. You are the leader of one of 4 squads sent out to find him. Based on intel, the space pirates take all of their prisoners to an abandoned ship christened "darkness" and leave them to die. It was supposedly a major ship in their colony once, but wasn't anymore for unknown reasons. Your mission is to hop in and find the president in darkness. However, upon exploration, you find the ship is not really abandoned and people run around in anarchy and the real reason for the placement of the prisinors is that they expect the inhabitants to kill them off. The president is killed and before you can escape, your small space pod is destroyed. Now you must escape, but along the way, you make several shocking discoveries about the history of the ship. That is the basic synopsis of my plot.

[acks45]

Interesting premise, but I don't even see the allusion to marathon.

<edit> also U.E.S.C. Stands for United Earth Space Council, I'm not sure there ARE countries.</edit>

[uescsuperhuman]

my story is not a marathon story, but I was suggesting a adjust it to be so, Ack.

[Major Pedro]

my story is not a marathon story, but I was suggesting a adjust it to be so, Ack.

It doesn't actually need to be a Marathon story. I like it, but there are just a few things I'd change. Just a personal preference though.

@ack45- You're right, there aren't countries in Marathon. There would still be subcultures, religious groups, and splinter factions who would do similar things. Plus I think Mars has or had an independent government. (I missed that bit of the story because there was this guy behind me I forgot to kill who kept disrupting my reading)

[acks45]

Oh.... I'm sorry, I was a little confused by this post.

[uescsuperhuman]

perhaps we should do what they did with halo when they made a new game and made tons of marathon references to it. Only the gameplay will be much better.

[acks45]

I think you'll find that the reason they did that is because they were working on another marathon game when they were bought out, which made that material the intellectual proptery of microsoft. rather than give the marathon franchise to microsoft they decided to change the names of everything and remake some stuff(Like U.N.S.C. instead of U.E.S.C for example). It's not that they made references to marathon, they already had those. what they had to do was disguise it enough that it was no longer related to the marathon series. youknow, just incase they were able to regain control of the company(which they have) and wanted to make another marathon game, then microsoft couldn't tell them they couldn't because of copyright infringement. I don't think this really matters that much because microsoft is still the publisher( and indeed has to be) for the halo games. If I was Jason Jones, I would probably keep making halo games even if it came from dubious roots.

<edit> More concept HUD art.:</edit>

[uescsuperhuman]

Yeah me too. Either way, great hud idea Ack. I think we'll use it.

[Major Pedro]

I've got VTFedit working through an arcane network of windows emulators, and I've started mucking with the textures. I need feedback from you mappers on what textures you've used so I know what ones to replace.

The thing is, with HL2, I can't find the textures I've put in. HL2 has thousands of textures. So yeah, you need to tell me what you're using.

[edit] The HUD is good (maybe leave off the snazi wood panelling though) but shouldn't it be up top, because that's where the helmet display thingy is?
[edit edit] They will NEVER stop making Halo games. Developers will still be squeezing cash outta that franchise when the sun explodes.

[uescsuperhuman]

Alright Nice. For now, I think we should just stick with the Marathon Textures, but I would like to redo them a little bit later. When you load up Source SDK through steam (the windows exclusive program used to buy all the source games), you can select your textures and they should show up and be usable.

My map is pretty much complete, minus textures, weapons, and extra tidbits.

B.T.W., Pedro, you should download the HL2 EI mod "Minerva", which was inspired by Half-Life and MARATHON!!!!! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

It even uses a terminal like system. When you hit certain areas, a message similar to the terminal messages only with orange text show up from a durandal like character. It has some of the best level design i've ever seen. It is not very long, about two hours and is rated 9.6 at ModDb, so you should try playing it. It could be a major inspiration to us. Problem is, it needs an installer. But with that windows emulator, you should be able to install it and use steam. Hope you can get it to work .
It can be found here http://www.moddb.com/mods/minerva.





Just because I was bored, I wrote out a revised version of my story's synopsis and changed some stuff. Let me know what you think.




"The premise of my story has to do with a future as if government conspiracy were real, sort of like Deus Ex. In 2041 (find the marathon reference in that number) the government decides to declare dictator-ship. A small war breaks out between police, riot police and soldiers vs. rebels. However, the rebels fail after only 3 hours of war due to a large number of death squads. Every one is equipped with an R.F.I.D. (Radio Frequency Identification) Chip and a killswitch and is watched over through a massive satellite that processes all the tracking information. Anyone who is caught doing anything that the government doesn't want you to do is put to death by means of killswitch. One day, 20 years later, the satellite gains too much information to hold and malfunctions. This results in several government officials who disagree with the current system of government to revolt and a revolution to take place.
Fast forward 10 years.
Things have gotten much worse. Everything is bad. None of the politicians pay attention to their country anymore and people are in a constant state of riot. They leave everything up to the military, so the country is in a state of civil war. You have a new leader due to a large revolt on the government in which the result was a damaged capital and the former leader's assassination. The new leader wants to bring order and justice to the world, but no one listens to him and believe it to be all propaganda. He wants to do change, but the rebels are to out of their minds. You are a marine who has been victorious in many battles so far. All of a sudden, a space colony of former earthlings who've seceded from their former planet, kidnaps the president with a major surprise attack. You are the leader of one of 4 squads sent out to find him. Based on intel, the space pirates take all of their prisoners to an abandoned ship christened "darkness" and leave them to die. It was supposedly a major ship in their colony once, but wasn't anymore for unknown reasons. Your mission is to hop in and find the president in darkness. However, upon exploration, you find the ship is not really abandoned and people run around in anarchy and the real reason for the placement of the prisoners is that they expect the inhabitants to kill them off. The president is killed and before you can escape, your small space pod is destroyed. Now you must escape, but along the way, you make several shocking discoveries about the history of the ship."

[acks45]

Purdeo doesnt have a windows computer uesc.

1) I'm not sure there is a reference that early.but the best i could imagine was the prestory to m1a1 where their talking about the guy in the landing craft.
2)people confirmed the complete lack of countries.
3)your story doesnt have much to do with with the known marathon story or universe, but i guess we've been saying that for a while now.

[treellama]

3)your story doesnt have much to do with with the known marathon story or universe, but i guess we've been saying that for a while now.

It also reads like a 6th grade book report

[MoppyPuppy]

I don't know about any of this stuff, but I was thinking...

What if someone made a program where Marathon Maps could be opened in extremely advanced video game engines?
Like some of ID software's game engines.

Or (Mac users prepare to freak...)
The HALO engine?

Then detail it as you see fit. This way, by using another engine, half the work is already done.

[treellama]

You can do this now, using a couple tools Loren Petrich wrote. You can export the level to a Lightwave Object, then use his LW2Quake to get it into the Quake engine.

I did this once with Sands Serif.

Surely nobody doing any of the port projects is making maps from scratch! But, maybe you already knew that, and are just playing dumb.

[acks45]

Allright, that makes making a verbatim remake easier, even if it means changing engines( i don't think there was a lot of work done anyways). Is there a similar converter for source? ( prolly not) and How do we export a map into lightwave format?

<edit> I'm assuming this is for quake 3?</edit>
<edit edit> I keep seeing quake II pop up on LP's page</edit edit>

[treellama]

I did it in original Quake, but I'm assuming once you get it into that format you can use Radiant to update to a newer Quake version.

[MoppyPuppy]

You can do this now, using a couple tools Loren Petrich wrote. You can export the level to a Lightwave Object, then use his LW2Quake to get it into the Quake engine.

I did this once with Sands Serif.

Surely nobody doing any of the port projects is making maps from scratch! But, maybe you already knew that, and are just playing dumb.

Oh yeah, I'm totally just screwing with all of you and playing dumb.

I mean, c'mon.
EVERYBODY knows who Lorn Petrich is, and what a Lightwave Object is.
And surely EVERYBODY knows whether or not people who do port projects make they're own levels.
EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT.

ITS ALL COMMON KNOWLEDGE AFTER ALL!

[acks45]

@mppoypppuyWhat?

Edit: Everything that TL has said he used to do this I have found. I haven't tried it because I dont have a mac, and I'm not sure if i can get the programs I need. But I have found the converter from lightwave to quake map, and I have also found the converter from Marathon map to 3d model.

I don't understand why you seem so aggravated.


Edit Edit: also found this.

[DeepThought]

You can actually make marathon maps into real models?

This I did not know... hehehe...


For the record, MP, I know what a lightwave object is (a model format) and who Loren Petrich is (god at making cool stuff like this).

[L'howon]

Oh yeah, I'm totally just screwing with all of you and playing dumb.

I mean, c'mon.
EVERYBODY knows who Lorn Petrich is, and what a Lightwave Object is.
And surely EVERYBODY knows whether or not people who do port projects make they're own levels.
EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT.

ITS ALL COMMON KNOWLEDGE AFTER ALL!

Perhaps they do, perhaps they don't. All the more reason for people to read more, and post less.

[acks45]

the point is that you would keep most of the difficult geometries to recreate, and then make good layout adjustments and fill the room with junks. I was really impressed with the recreation of the feel of marathon in M:Ressurection.

<edit> I wonder how the overlapping parts of maps will react to being converted into hammer?</edit>

[uescsuperhuman]

All that sounds cool. If we end up going with a Marathon Remake instead of a scenario (which I am kind of leaning towards), that tool might come in handy, though my mac doesn't have classic mode D:. So I don't think I'd be able to convert the map files into .bsp's. It might still come in handy, however.

Work on the map is going great. I just made the first build and just need to texture it and add weapons and stuff. Pretty soon, we might be able to have a match through HL2 DM and begin work on the multiplayer portion of the game since there is so much debate on the single-player portion. We could use the extra time to think about scenario vs. remake, or just our own game.

[Paracelsur]

I offer the following hypothesis: If the collaborators can work on a short but important sequence of the game (like G4 Sunbathing/Blaspheme Quarantine, or part of the Pfhor ship as I mentioned earlier) and get it really right, and take advantage of the new engine's capabilities to really make the gameplay fun and interesting, it would be more than worth it to attempt a full-blown remake.

And that's even if there are weird changes like turning some of the terminals (certainly not all of them) into voice broadcasts, or screwing around with the arsenal so that the player could only hold a couple of weapons.

[Shadowbreaker]

Oh yeah, I'm totally just screwing with all of you and playing dumb.

I mean, c'mon.
EVERYBODY knows who Lorn Petrich is, and what a Lightwave Object is.
And surely EVERYBODY knows whether or not people who do port projects make they're own levels.
EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT.

ITS ALL COMMON KNOWLEDGE AFTER ALL!

It has been possible to export maps as 3d models since Chisel, using its "Write Rotator File" ability... I forgot if it saved in any formats other than Rotator. I remember taking some pretty interesting pictures of a solid green object that resembled a 3d automap of my level.